First site in the UK to screen 2 patients in the REFLECTIONS Clinical Trial

First site in the UK to recruit to the QUIET Study

Winner of the NIHR Award for Most Research Impact

Recently congratulated by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network for recruiting the first two UK patients to a rheumatoid arthritis study

2nd highest recruiter to B-AHEAD2 Cancer Study, target was 5 patients and we have recruited 24 patients so far

1st global site to open for 2 ENT studies- DYMISTA and QUIET

Fastest site to open globally for DARE a diabetes study

Exceeding target numbers for MAMMO 50, and NCRN452 Cancer Studies

Exceeding target number for the UKGPCS Prostrate trial our target for the length of the trial was 50 and up to date we have 70 with 3 years left to run

Exceeded our target for Chemo Induced Changes in Cognitive Function Study - our target was 3 patients and we managed to recruit 10. This study has now closed

The Rheumatology Research Team have been shortlisted for the NIHR GNCLRN research awards

Tracey Taylor (Research Nurse) has been shortlisted for the Outstanding Contribution to Research Category in the NIHR GMCLRN research awards the awards ceremony is in Manchester on the 30th October 2014

Wrightington Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust Research Team have been finalists in the National HSJ Awards in London for the last two years

Dr Chattopadhyay (Consultant Rheumatologist and Professor N Kumar (ENT Consultant) have been asked to act as Chief Investigators on two new studies

Usman Butt, Research Fellow Upper Limb Research at Wrightington in collaboration with Professor Ian Trail, David Temperley and Professor Freemont at the University of Manchester, won a prize for the best presentation at a recent British Elbow and Shoulder Society Meeting in Nottingham.

Performance in Initiating and Delivering Clinical Research

The Government's Plan for Growth, published in March 2011, announced the transformation of incentives at local level for efficiency in initiation and delivery of clinical research.

The National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) has therefore established 2 performance benchmarks that we and other NHS providers are measured against.

As a major UK Clinical Trials Unit with improvement in patient outcomes our primary aim, we are committed to the principle of initiating studies as efficiently as possible and delivering planned recruitment to time and target and therefore we have welcomed these benchmarks.

The 2 benchmarks are as follows:

Initiating Clinical Research- the 70 day benchmark
Clinical trials to be set-up and operational within a 70 day period (basically this looks at how quickly studies are set-up and recruited to)

Delivering Clinical Research- time and target

Recruitment of commercial clinical trials to time and target (basically this looks at whether or not we've recruited the target number of patients in the timeframe we said we would). The overall aim here is to increase the number of patients who have the opportunity to participate in research and to enhance the nation's attractiveness as a host for research.

As a specialist rheumatology centre, we also host quite a lot of clinical trials in this disease , which sometimes means it often takes some time to identify/recruit the first patient and thus the 70-day benchmark is not feasible for some studies..

We are currently required to submit data on these 2 benchmarks to NIHR on a quarterly basis. Our most recent submission was submitted in January 2019 and is provided shown below.